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Wednesday, 22 February 2017

Learning Unlimited Week Eight: Women who made a difference

Eleanor Roosevelt

In this (1984), her centennial year, Eleanor
Roosevelt is being hailed for her achievements in human rights, economic
justice and international peace. But some historians say the ''First Lady of
the World,'' as she was sometimes called, was never much of a feminist.

In fact, she had a strong disdain for the word, and
carried on a long, acrimonious debate with Alice Paul, head of the National
Woman's Party, the feminist group whose main goal since 1923 has been the
passage of the equal rights amendment.

Still, today's leading feminists seem to bear no
grudges toward Eleanor Roosevelt. They tend to praise her accomplishments for
women and sweep her feminist shortcomings under the rug. Most of them seem sure
that if she were alive today, she would certainly be a feminist.

''She was what I would call an instinctive
feminist,'' said former Representative Bella S. Abzug. ''Most of her work was
for the advancement of women, whether it was in peace or politics. She helped
women get into top positions in the Roosevelt Administration, including Frances
Perkins, who was the first female Cabinet member.''

New
York Times, ASSESSING ELEANOR ROOSEVELT AS A FEMINIST

By
JUDY KLEMESRUD November 5, 1984

After she left the White House in 1945, ER continued
to promote women's equality. Using a variety of different venues–the United
Nations, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the
National Council of Negro Women, Americans for Democratic Action, her "My
Day" column, and various labor organizations–ER argued that women must
"become more conscious of themselves as women and of their ability to
function as a group. At the same time they must try to wipe from men's
consciousness the need to consider them as a group or as women in their
everyday activities, especially as workers in industry or the
professions." ER believed women had special qualities that made them
peacemakers, conferees and mothers, but she also believed these qualities made
them fine politicians, reformers, advocates and professionals.

Historians often debate whether or not ER should be
called a feminist. Those who say she was not a feminist base their argument on
ER's opposition to the National Woman's Party and the Equal Rights Amendment. They,
like Lois Scharf, argue that because ER did not "view social problems
through the unique lens of gender, discover and define the discriminatory
features of society, examine the underlying causes for female inferiority, and
concentrate on their alleviation," that the answer to this question is
"a qualified no." Others, like Allida Black and Blanche Cook,
disagree. They say her firm belief in women's equality and her forty-year
campaign to advance women politically, economically, and socially is proof of
ER's commitment to gender equality. While they agree that ER opposed the Equal
Rights Amendment throughout the twenties, thirties, and forties, they point to
ER dropping her opposition in the late fifties.

Pioneering Feminist

Gloria Steinem

After finishing her degree in 1956, Steinem received
a fellowship to study in India. She first worked for Independent Research
Service and then established a career for herself as a freelance writer. One of
her most famous articles from the time was a 1963 expose on New York City's
Playboy Club for Show magazine. Steinem went undercover for the piece, working
as a waitress, or a scantily clad "bunny" as they called them, at the
club. In the late 1960s, she helped create New York magazine, and wrote a
column on politics for the publication. Steinem became more engaged in the
women's movement after reporting on an abortion hearing given by the radical
feminist group known as the Redstockings. She expressed her feminist views in
such essays as "After Black Power, Women's Liberation."

In 1971 Steinem joined other prominent feminists,
such as Bella Abzug and Betty Friedan, in forming the National Women's
Political Caucus, which worked on behalf of women's issues. She also took the
lead in launching the pioneering, feminist Ms magazine. It began as an insert
in New York magazine in December 1971; its first independent issue appeared in
January 1972. Under her direction, the magazine tackled important topics,
including domestic violence. Ms. became the first national publication to
feature the subject on its cover in 1976.

On the day in 1991 that the Senate confirmed
Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, Anita Hill — the little-known law
professor who riveted the nation by accusing him of sexual harassment — faced
news cameras outside her simple brick home in Norman, Okla., with her mother by
her side, and politely declined to comment on the vote.

In the nearly 23 years since, Ms. Hill, now a
professor of social policy, law and women’s studies at Brandeis University
here, has worked hard, she likes to say, to help women “find their voices.” She
has also found hers — and she is not afraid to use it.

“I believe in my heart that he shouldn’t have been
confirmed,” she said in a recent interview, acknowledging that it irritates her
to see Justice Thomas on the court. “I believe that the information I provided
was clear, it was verifiable, it was confirmed by contemporaneous witnesses
that I had talked with. And I think what people don’t understand is that it
does go to his ability to be a fair and impartial judge.”

Anita Hill

It was a surprisingly candid comment from a deeply
private woman who has long been careful in the spotlight. But the quiet life
Ms. Hill has carved out for herself is about to be upended — by her own choice
— with the release of a documentary,
Anita.

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani activist for female
education and the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate. She is known mainly for
human rights advocacy for education and for women in her native Swat Valley in northwest
Pakistan, where the local Taliban had at times banned girls from attending
school. Malala's advocacy has since grown into an international movement.

Born in Swat District, Pakistan, her family came to
run a chain of schools in the region. In early 2009, when she was 11–12, Malala
wrote a blog under a pseudonym for the BBC Urdu detailing her life during the
Taliban occupation of Swat. The following summer, journalist Adam B. Ellick
made a New York Times documentary about her life as the Pakistani military
intervened in the region. Malala rose in prominence, giving interviews in print
and on television, and she was nominated for the International Children's Peace
Prize by activist Desmond Tutu.

On the afternoon of 9 October 2012, Yousafzai was
injured after a Taliban gunman attempted to assassinate her. Yousafzai remained
unconscious and in critical condition at the Rawalpindi Institute of
Cardiology, but later her condition improved enough for her to be sent to the
Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham. The assassination attempt sparked a
national and international outpouring of support for Malala. Deutsche Welle wrote in January 2013 that Malala
may have become "the most famous teenager in the world." Weeks after
her assassination attempt, a group of fifty leading Muslim clerics in Pakistan
issued a fatwa against those who tried to kill her.

Since recovering, Yousafzai became a prominent
education activist. Based out of Birmingham, Yousafzai founded the Malala Fund,
a non-profit and in 2013 co-authored I am
Malala, an international bestseller. In 2015, Yousafzai was a subject of
the Oscar-shortlisted documentary He
Named Me Malala. The 2013, 2014 and 2015 issues of Time magazine featured
Malala as one of the most influential people globally. In 2012, she was the
recipient of Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize and the 2013 Sakharov
Prize. In 2014, Malala was announced as the co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel
Peace Prize, along with Kailash Satyarthi, for her struggle against the
suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to
education. Since March 2013, she has been a pupil at the all-girls' Edgbaston
High School in Birmingham.

"I wake up in a house that was built by
slaves," the first lady told 2016 graduates of the City College of New
York in June. Although it has been true of every first lady who has lived in
the White House, no other first lady has put it as bluntly.

When she addressed 2015 graduates of Tuskegee
University, a historically black college in Alabama, her prepared remarks noted
the role racism has played in her life and the role that it would likely play
in the lives of those graduates:

The world won't always
see you in those caps and gowns. ... Instead they will make assumptions about who they think you are based
on their limited notion of the world. And my husband and I know how frustrating
that experience can be. We've both felt the sting of those daily slights
throughout our entire lives — the folks who crossed the street in fear of their
safety; the clerks who kept a close eye on us in all those department stores;
the people at formal events who assumed we were the "help" — and
those who have questioned our intelligence, our honesty, even our love of this
country.

Berta Wilson

Had Bertha Wilson meekly followed the patriarchal
advice handed down to her when she inquired about doing a law degree in the
mid-1950s, the Canadian judicial system might have looked very different today.
"Madam, we have no room here for dilettantes. Why don't you just go home
and take up crocheting," Horace E. Read, the dean of the law school at
Dalhousie University barked at her when the minister's wife and former school
teacher appeared before him, seeking admission to the school in the fall of
1954. He finally relented, according to Madam Justice Wilson, who recounted the
story in a rare interview with the late journalist Sandra Gwyn in Saturday
Night magazine in 1985. "From my very first day of classes, I knew the law
was my thing," she said. "I just soaked it up like a sponge."

Judge Wilson's significance as the first woman
appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada goes far beyond gender. She was sworn
in on March 30, 1982, less than three weeks before The Queen arrived in Canada
to sign the Charter of Rights and Freedoms into law. Consequently, her period
on the bench was a time in which the definitions of individual and collective
rights and freedoms were tested - from a woman's right to abortion, to a
refugee claimant's right to be heard.

Beyond the conjunction of her gender and her timing,
there was also Judge Wilson's character. An outsider with a ramrod sense of
integrity and the bravery to avoid consensus and speak her own mind, she often
took minority views when it would have been much easier to conform to the views
expressed by her male colleagues. As Ms. Gwyn described her: "It's her
sense and her sensibility, a kind of practical sensitivity tinged with Scottish
asperity, enriched but by no means defined by her genes."

Nevertheless, the decision to appoint her to the
Supreme Court was not without opposition. "The 'establishment' in the
Ontario legal community was shameless in making the case that she [Madame
Justice Bertha Wilson of the Ontario Court of Appeal]wasn't 'ready,' and that
there were other [male]candidates who were better 'qualified,' according to
Eddie Goldenberg in The Way it Works: Inside Ottawa. "Even chief Justice
Bora Laskin, who had his own preferred candidate at the time, made that
argument very vociferously to Prime Minister Trudeau at the time," wrote
Mr. Goldenberg, who was then special constitutional adviser to Minister of
Justice Jean Chretien.

Rosalie Abella

"It was not just her brilliant mind, which was
remarkable in its rigour, it was the serendipitous presence of Bertha Wilson
and Brian Dickson on the Supreme Court of Canada. I call them the Fred and
Ginger of the Charter," said Madame Justice Rosalie Abella of the Supreme
Court of Canada. "They choreographed the Charter. They gave it the
muscular interpretation that launched the Charter in its first decade,"
especially in contrast to the legalistically anemic Bill of Rights that
preceded it. Speaking of the jurisprudence that Madam Justice Wilson developed,
she said that her commitment to fairness was "unshakeable" and her
legacy was "profound" in so many areas.

January 12, 2017

A Canadian judge has been named Global Jurist of the Year
by a Chicago law school.

Justice Rosalie Abella, 70, who has been a member of
the Supreme Court of Canada since 2004, was named the fourth winner of the
award by Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Center for International Human
Rights. Past winners are Justice Gloria Escobar, president of the Guatemalan
Constitutional Court, Justice Shireen Fisher, president of the Special Court
for Sierra Leone; and Acting Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke of South Africa’s
Constitutional Court.

David Jacobson, who was U.S. Ambassador to Canada
from 2009 to 2013, nominated her for the award, which is for a current judge
who has shown a lifetime of commitment in the face of adversity to defending
human rights or principles of international criminal justice.

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That Line of Darkness: Vol. 2

That Line of Darkness: Vol. 1

About Me

Author of That Line of Darkness: The Shadow of Dracula and the Great War, Encompass Editions (2012) and second volume, That Line of Darkness: The Gothic from Lenin to bin Laden, Encompass Editions (2013).